Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to computer-aided design (CAD) and, more specifically, to techniques for mesh boundary smoothing.
Description of the Related Art
A wide variety of software applications are currently available to end-users, including computer-aided design (CAD) applications, computer graphics applications, and three-dimensional (3D) modeling applications, among others. Many of these software applications allow an end-user to create and modify 2D and/or 3D designs. For example, an end-user may interact with a 3D modeling application to add geometry to a design, remove geometry from a design, extrude portions of the design, or join two or more designs. Such operations typically are performed by modifying a mesh of primitives (e.g., triangles) associated with the design.
In conventional software applications, modifying a triangle mesh associated with a design (e.g., by adding, removing, extruding, or merging geometry) can introduce distortions and irregularities to the mesh. For example, extruding a region of the mesh can produce an extrusion boundary having rough, irregular edges that reflect the boundary triangles of the mesh region selected for extrusion. Moreover, manually smoothing a boundary to perform an extrusion can be tedious and time-consuming for the end-user. Further, applying conventional smoothing algorithms to an extruded boundary often produces unsatisfactory results (e.g., rounded, poorly-defined extrusions).
As the foregoing illustrates, there is a need in the art for a more effective way to enable application end-users to apply smoothing operations to the boundaries of primitive meshes.